April 26, 2018 at 11:14 AM (PT)

The FCC has denied LAKE BROADCASTING, INC.'s interlocutory appeal of a decision by FCC Administrative Law Judge RICHARD L. SIPPEL that denied LAKE's motion to disqualify him from presiding over the case of PATRICK SULLIVAN's sale of W238CE/MONTGOMERY, AL to LAKE, wholly owned by former INDIANA and MISSOURI station owner and convicted sex criminal MIKE RICE, for $1,000.

SIPPEL had dismissed SULLIVAN and LAKE's motions to have the sale dismissed so SULLIVAN could sell the station to another party and had declined to remove himself from the case; LAKE alleged bias, but the Commission said that LAKE failed to meet its burden of proving “favoritism or antagonism that would make fair judgment impossible.”

The decision to deny LAKE's appeal did not go without some disagreement, with Commissioner MICHAEL O'RIELLY, taking the opportunity to criticize the ALJ process while concurring with the result, writing a statement saying, "While the bias burden may not have been met because it rightfully remains high, I am concerned that the ALJ took unnecessary actions in these situations. For example, denying a motion to dismiss in order to pursue a case on the character of someone who decided to withdraw his application to be a Commission licensee appears to me to be a questionable use of resources."

O'RIELLY also called the three-year prehearing process "an absurd amount of time needed to resolve such a matter and reinforces to me the need to fully weigh the costs and benefits of the ALJ process." And he suggested that "complaints about the ALJ process are not isolated incidents but paint a picture of questionable decisions coupled with an elevated level of inefficiency. It seems to me that too often the Commission has had to reverse the decisions of the ALJ or address one ALJ decision or another. To its credit, the media bureau has begun to use paper hearings to completely avoid this bureaucratic mess. This reality only reaffirms my call to consider eliminating the ALJ process altogether."